Foal Playmates Have Touching Reunion After Long Separation

It's easy to forget that animals can have feelings that closely resemble those of humans. But cows can have best friends, dogs are slavishly loyal to their owners, lions have close-knit family packs and dolphins work together in pods to hunt food and protect one another. Whether we realize it or not, animals are more like us than they are different.That certainly is true for the horses featured in the video below. Owner Sue Blagburn explains on her YouTube video how, in 2012, she "repurchased Arthur, a horse that (she) bred but had to sell four and a half years previously in 2008." Watch as Arthur is reunited after four years apart with the two horses with whom he was raised as a foal, Harry and William. As soon as Arthur enters the paddock, the other two gallop over, thrilled to see their childhood friend. "This 5 minute film is the editing down of almost an hour of extraordinary footage of amazing hugging and communicating, that even I didn't think would be quite so loving and extraordinary," Blagburn adds.

What's going on with Arthur, Harry and William's lives you may be wondering. Actually, these 3 amazing friends have put that love and friendship to use. They're now fundamental members of Adventures with Horses, Equine Facilitated Experiential Learning, where they're coaches and guides for humans. As they explain on their website, the idea is to focus "on what horses can teach us about body language, embodied and intuitive ways of knowing and somatic intelligence." This idea isn't new. Elements Behavioral Health explains how "people who have struggled to make progress or achieve their treatment goals have made significant breakthroughs with the aid of equine therapy," and that research shows how equine therapy is actually quite effective when it comes to deal with several health problems, as it "lowers blood pressure and heart rate, alleviates stress, and reduces symptoms of anxiety and depression.""There are striking similarities between horses and people," The Ranch equine therapist Dede Beasley says. Indeed, when one sees the video below, it's difficult not to immediately relate to these horses reaction when they see each other after such a long period of time.